This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Liturgical dancing

can-can

Doing the can-can in Liverpool Cathedral.

Liturgical dance is a vital component of modern worship - so much more exciting than traddy things like the Gloria or Credo, and much more interesting than the Bishop's Letter (do we really care what he got for Christmas?) Accordingly, we are pleased to publish an excerpt from the new Liverpool Missal, Lord have Mersey!

PRIEST: You put your left leg in.
PEOPLE: You put your left leg out.
PRIEST: In out, in out.
PEOPLE: Shake it all about.
PRIEST: You do the hokey-cokey and you turn around.
PEOPLE: That's what it's all about.

PRIEST: It is indeed what it is all about, and it is 
our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to
do the hokey-cokey and to turn around...
liturgical dancing

It is the priest's job to lead the liturgical dancing, as shown here.

The most recent liturgical dance in Liverpool Cathedral was held to celebrate the arrival of the relics of St John Bosco (that name seems strangely familiar). The saint was greeted by that lovely hymn based on Ezekiel 37, to which the whole congregation was invited to dance:

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear de word of de Lord.
dem bones

♫ Your foot-bone's connected to your leg-bone... ♫

Liturgical dancing is here to stay. It has the great advantage that it concentrates the worshippers' minds, not on God, not on the meaning of the Mass, but on everyday things like being "cool" and having "rhythm." Also, it can take place at any point in the service.

silly dance

No Mass is complete without some people waving cardboard boxes above their heads.

Of course the Anglicans have been doing liturgical dances for years. Here, Archbishop Sentamu of York demonstrates some of the movements to a sceptical Rowan Williams.

chestnut tree

♫ Underneath the spreading chestnut tree... ♫

The full video of "Lord have Mersey" is here.

23 comments:

  1. Priest: "you lookin at me Wack?'
    Cong: "get ya coat, you've pulled"

    These are from the Missile of St Phil the Poddy.

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    Replies
    1. Well sister Jess, thanks for putting up with me as long as you did. I guess Chalcedon won out. He really hates when i bring up historical facts. No knowledge allowed. Just keep those graven images comin. Ive been around the block befor but never found someone who could deny the popes hat looks like a fish head.And keep a straight face. Hahaha. He said it was a coincidence. Thats what happens when the blood rushes to your head when you bow to long befor graven images.

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    2. Dere Bosco. In the olden days,the Pope wore a triple tiara, which didn't look anything like a fish (unless you look through the bottom of a gin bottle, in which case it might look like a mutant stickleback. It was crypto Protestants that persuaded the pope to swap to the fish hat, therefore it is proddies like yourself who are the Babylonian Oannes freaks.

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    3. Protestants made the pope wear the fish hat. Now ive heard everything.Im in another site where some catholics said the CC had nothing to do with the inquisition and that they tried to stop it.You guys will say anything to keep that snake pit from looking like a snake pit.Punch drunk catholics.

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  2. I wonder could you dig out the vintage footage of Rowan tripping over his beard doing the Lambeth Walk, during the Pope' s recent visit?

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  3. Um, havin a lotta trubble wiv spambots tryin to advertise dere own crummy websites here. If I is away for a few days I may have to put back de fing wot makes you take 20 minutes trying to decipher a capcha.

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    1. hey little bro Eccles, you gonna do a special about my feast day? Its comin up fast. have your readers get out their graven image of me and start bowing to it early to avoid the rush. Only 20 shopping days left.
      Chesnuts roasting on an open fire
      Jack frost nipping at your nose
      Bosco carols being sung by the fire
      and folks dressed up like eskimoes

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    2. Bosco my dere bruvver, we fought we'd got you safely locked up in de celler. I'd better warn de nearby convents dat you is on de loose again.



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    3. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

      Get Livefyre or Disqus or IntenseDebate or anything like that really.

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    4. How did you get loose Eccles? You were chained in the attic. You kept drinkin anti Mollies vodka and writing stupid entries in your smelly blog. We had to do something.You kept yelling something about how funny you thought you were. I put the duct tape around your mouth while anti wrapped the chains around you.Howd you get out? You been readin Harry Houdini again?

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    5. Ullo, Bosco dere. I is beginnin to doutb whevver you is reely saved.

      Is you still writin dat blogg dat noboddy ever reads?

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    6. I dont advertize my site much, or at all. Most blogs wont let you post other blogs. One day i will. +-Idolaters sure wont let me post on their pope ridden sites. They like to hush up the history of their cult. Dont blame em really.

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  4. Genius. (I had no idea where the "dialogue" was going until we got into the Preface. Is that Old ICEL?)

    The video is, er, remarkable, and I see it has already attracted favourable comment from a deacon in good standing.

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  5. I want to set you guys straight. Well no that's not what I mean cause you're already straight. Dis is wot I mean.Like the special understandin Masses for the same sex afflicted,dis is for de Saint Vitus Dance afflicted. In de modern vernacular I think it's called The Jerks.

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  6. My feeology, apparently, aint wot it wos. Was he not Lord of the Dance despite all that said He?

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    Replies
    1. Ah we discusses dat elsewhere:

      http://ecclesandbosco.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/bad-hynms-1.html

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  7. It's this sort of reckless tampering with tradition, without regard to consequences, that has doomed our civlisation. The proper term is "hokey-pokey" as any scholar of the form can tell you.

    Hokey-cokey, indeed.

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  8. Ding Ding A Dong Eccles Baby, in the Groovy Name of the Holy Rainbow Spirit !!!!

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  9. Little Red Riding Hood10 January 2013 at 20:43

    Well I don't think I should like to dance with any of you naughty traddies. Might be worse than dances with wolves.

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  10. This video raises the question: what exactly is "liturgical dance"? There is no doubt that there are some people dancing. There is some peripheral evidence here in Paddy's Wigwam that other people have been trying to get on with a liturgy. Two entirely separate activities, with the dance as a distraction from the main liturgical focus, the altar. This video makes that fact very clear. Liturgical music involves the congregation in active participation in the liturgy. Dance turns the congregation into spectators: it goes entirely against the teaching of Vatican II on active participation.

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  11. Dominic MacCarthy11 January 2013 at 10:57

    That poor dancing girl. She just got the address wrong. She was booked for one of them lap-dancing clubs down the back of Duke Street and she ended up in Mount Pleasant by mistake.

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  12. Wittle Wed Widdin Hood, didn't the Sir Dougwas Quintet make up some song and dance about you? tsk,tsk.

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  13. ...The term graven image lterally dfined as an artifice of man’s hand..if we take the active intellect as being the faculty of the soul symbolic of the hand of the soul in that it is the vehicle by which the reason is able to apprehend and form sensible abstractions..then if one moved by the consubstantiality of the sirit of God within is moved to create images which proceed as their cause from the glory of God.. so, Jesus Christ is said to be consubstantial with the Father in his divinity and consubstantial with "us" in his humanity. the term being canonized by the Church in 325 at the Council of Nicaea..as which the virgin mary and the saints may qualify we see that in no way could these images be considered graven but only amalgams of universal truth monuments to the glory of which God himself has instilled in our limited imaginations... a graven image would qualify as something that had no association with the divine..i know this blost is a funny put on but i figured i would throw this out there for the benefit of st biggles/bosco...as wellthe term graven image may also apply to man made doctrine or custom which is foreign to God and his church such as some of the outer vestibules or porches which claim to be churches ascribe to and slavishly foller since after the days of the reformation....

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